*Ve likülli kavmin had…*¹
What a strange, yet painful coincidence! We were five people in the second-class compartment we boarded at Serez Station. And all five of us were Turkish and Muslim… Many flocks of crows resembling the ominous and dark stains of last year’s disaster and defeat, still vivid and lingering, were wandering in empty, unplowed fields whose owners had been killed. When the train began to move, we all greeted each other once and then fell silent with the stone-like stillness of that heavy resignation – burning yet freezing – that is felt only in captive and wretched Muslim lands. The weather was very cold. Through the thin fog on the closed windows, we seemed to see deserted villages with their minarets destroyed and crosses hung on their mosques. These villages were in the distance, in the purple mists at the very edge of the horizon. Now Greek refugees from the Caucasus, arriving in Salonika by the shipload to howl their bells in these orphaned lands where the call to prayer had fallen silent, were settling. We were silent. And as if to avoid seeing this enemy’s fields – reminding us of the deaths of millions of our blood and religious brothers – these golden fields forcibly torn from our own homeland, we looked ahead. A voice from across from me said, “I thought I was in the time of Turkiye. There are no foreigners with us!”
I smiled. I nodded my head. This was a small bey. His mustache was still freshly grown. With his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets, as if frightened of something, he had pulled his head between his shoulders and raised his fair, thin eyebrows. He was thin and anemic. His face shone with a spiritual and melancholy whiteness shadowed by ivory. In the other corner, by the window, a hoca with a white turban and black robe was dozing like an old, sick, powerless, and mottled heap. The plump bey efendi beside him, wearing new travel clothes and a black alaturka beard, looked at me and laughed. Across from him, a tall, yellow-complexioned young man in the latest loose-fitting fashion, strong and with bright eyes, said, “Ah, such is the world…” We were silent. It was as if nothing had changed in two years. For a moment I was caught up in the illusion that “I’m going to Salonika under Turkish administration” and was expecting the door to be opened by a conductor in a red fez. And with some illogical courage, the small bey from Serez wasn’t afraid, didn’t consider the possibility that one of us might be a Greek spy.
“I wonder when the Turkish army will come and take these places back?” he said.
I let slip from my mouth that clichéd phrase we always throw over things we don’t want to know, learn, understand, recognize, or explain: “God knows!”
The elegant, large young man in front of the old hoca, scratching his thick red nose with the long nail of his little finger, laughed and said, “What God knows is obvious! But let the servant also know that Turkish feet will never again step on these lands.”
“Why not?” I cried out. The dozing white-bearded hoca woke up. He raised his head. He looked at each of us. I had forgotten I was in Greece. Trees and ditches were rapidly passing behind the windows. The plump gentleman, who appeared to be very wealthy, looking around said, “Let’s speak quietly…” and turning to me, continued:
“My son, if it’s something to be proud of, I too can be as Muslim and fanatical as you without any effort. I graduated from Mülkiye-i Şahane.² I served as district governor and provincial governor for eighteen years. I’m telling you that Muslims have no right to live. And the Turks will never come back here again. There’s no need to hide from you here the truths I couldn’t say in Turkiye. Because we’re on the territory of a free and civilized government. Neither this respected hoca efendi nor you will find the justice of former times here that would demand my head be cut off or that I be hanged, claiming I’m irreligious or against Islam. It’s religions that create civilizations, progress, advancements, histories. Religions destroy one universe and establish a second in its place. It’s religion that moves the foundations of all individuals’ actions and draws the great main lines in society. Islam, however, destroys the community and national tendencies in its individuals and makes them all live in the unseeing blindness of a dark fanaticism. Witness to my words is all the Islam throughout the world… Hundreds of millions of Muslims and our fifty million Turks still struggle with the superstitions and myths of thirteen or fourteen centuries ago: the Turks in Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rumelia, Khiva, Bukhara, Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, India, Egypt, Tripoli, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Great Sahara, Zanzibar, Java, Somalia, Sumatra… Shall I list more? In short, all of Islam today is under the yoke of developed, strengthened, advanced Christian nations… Only our Turkiye has a semblance of independence. But what independence!… It cannot raise its customs duties by ten para. It cannot make a comfortable treaty with its enemies. It cannot enter the Christian schools in the capital. In short, the same factors that caused the destruction of the hundred-odd Islamic governments we read about in Islamic history still exist in Turkiye. When the same laws affect the same things, the results are the same. Therefore, it’s certain that Turkiye, like other Muslim governments, will be destroyed, its name will be erased from history, and we Turks, like all Muslims, will soon spend our lives in wretchedness, ignorance, and disgrace, praying with loyalty to the Christian masters who will take Istanbul, just like our other coreligionists… and…”
This was a passionate and fanatical unbeliever. I was going to advise him not to get carried away by his feelings and fanaticism when making his logic and comparisons. I was waiting for him to be quiet, to finish his speech. The young bey from Serez had pulled his head out from between his thin shoulders and opened his beautiful, magnificent eyes. He suddenly interrupted the former provincial governor who graduated from Mülkiye-i Şahane.
“What about the Mahdi? Won’t the Mahdi appear?”
“Which Mahdi?”
“Which Mahdi would it be? Don’t you know about him yet? The Mahdi will appear. He will lead the Muslims. He will kill all the infidels. He will make the whole world Muslim.”
The plump bey efendi, holding his belly with his plump white hands, was laughing, his red cheeks blushing more and more. The elegant young man across from the old hoca also couldn’t help laughing at poor Serez bey’s naivety, saying, “Hey little bey, when will this Mahdi appear?” making fun, “If at least he’s coming soon, let’s not sell our farms to the infidels for nothing…”
The locomotive was blowing its whistle. I was thinking about how to defend the naive boy waiting for the “Mahdi.” The old hoca efendi in the other corner with a white, large turban and white, large beard straightened up. He opened his large, deep, small eyes. He adjusted the clean hem of his thick black robe. He was opening his mouth for the first time.
“You’re laughing at the Mahdi, eh…” he said. I turned my head toward the window, not wanting to hear the nonsense that a senile bigot would spout about the Mahdi who would try to prove with science that the earth was flat and stood like a tray on an ox’s horn on top of a fish. But the hoca efendi began to speak with the heavy and special rhythm of a strange recitation I wasn’t unfamiliar with. But I couldn’t look outside anymore either. While listening to him with all my heart, my mouth remained open several centimeters like that of the young bey from Serez.
“Who is this Mahdi? Do you know, my children? The lost twelfth imam! All Muslims await his coming… This is undoubtedly an illusion. Let me tell you where and how this illusion arose with what influences: Islam is an ideal. Such a lofty, solid, high ideal that it’s offensive… Every Muslim harbors the ambition to take non-Islamic countries, to make them all Muslim. Time has passed amidst seditions and discord. Islamic governments have perished one by one. Muslims have become captives. But in every captive Muslim, the Islamic ideal has left an unconscious tradition, hope, ambition. Every Muslim groaning under the heavy and fiery chains of captivity has not lost hope for a day of salvation, of deliverance. And they have attributed the realization of this hope to the twelfth imam, the Mahdi, who will appear again one day. This Mahdi is the savior, the guide that the Islamic conscience awaits with an unconscious trust. Will such a savior really appear and save all Muslims from captivity, oppression, and exploitation? In all Islamic lands, in the villages of Rumelia, Asia, Bulgaria, India, in the deserts of Africa, Muslims all await a savior, a Mahdi. There are many tales and stories about the Mahdi. Mixed into these are the saddest, strangest, and most magnificent poems sleeping in the wounded soul of a great and wretched community. Like the White Minaret and such… But will this Mahdi truly come? No and yes… The Islamic spirit gives this name to every hero who emerges as a savior with an unconscious naivety and trust. But when he can’t succeed, the word ‘Mahdi’ becomes ‘Mütemehdi’³. Again the truth begins to be awaited. But… But no… Such a Mahdi will not appear and immediately take revenge on the conquerors by uniting all Muslims. But will this captivity last until doomsday? No, no… Surely one day the Muslims’ revenge will be taken. But how? Our great and holy book, the Holy Quran, answers this, saying:
Ve likülli kavmin had…
Yes, all peoples have their own guides particular to them. They lead them to righteousness. For example, the caliph cannot go and save the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They will work, a devoted one, many devoted ones will emerge from among them. They will take up arms. They will imitate the saviors of the Christian nations who were freed from captivity. Those in Algeria, in Morocco, in Tunisia, in Sudan, even in Egypt too… Those in other places too… Savior guides will emerge from within themselves, from their own peoples. They will lead the people they belong to. Then… The Islamic nations freed from captivity, whose heads are beginning to grasp science and reason, will form an “internationalism” among themselves like Christian nations, and this is the truth of the ‘Islamic Unity’ ideal. Once this ‘Islamic internationalism’ ideal becomes reality, the ‘Christian internationalism,’ that is, the Europeans, will not be able to attack all together small Islamic peoples they find weak and unprotected. Only then will ‘right and justice’ arise in the world from this balance. The guides of a people are those who awaken that people from the sleep of heedlessness, ignorance, and incomprehension. We Turks will walk toward a national ideal illuminated by the sacred rays of guidance in our saviors’ hands, break the chains under which we groan, and even rush to the aid of our non-Turkish Islamic brothers. And like us, every Islamic people is justified in awaiting their own guide. This good news has been given to us Muslims by the Holy Quran. Yes, the Holy Quran is in our hands… There is no single Mahdi. But there will be many guides.
While the common people await that single, imaginary Mahdi, we – Turkish, Arab, Persian, and other Islamic intellectuals – must await our own guides, the true Mahdis. And we must not doubt for even a moment whether they will appear or not…”
We had stopped at some station. The train door suddenly opened and the old hoca fell silent. A swarthy conductor was saying “Please…” to a Greek in a top hat.
This fellow, looking at us with indescribably deep hatred and disgust, paused and said in Greek, “But there are Turks here!”
Scowling, he scrutinized each of us. The heroic conductor immediately showed his usefulness.
“Come on now… Gather at the other end. Here in front of the window, monsieur will be comfortable…”
The hoca and the young man across from him, lowering their faces to the ground, came toward our side and squeezed in. The entering elegant and insolent monsieur removed his hat and stretched his feet onto the opposite bench. He practically lay down. He lit his cigar. Putting on his monocle, he began to look us over. The old hoca, who couldn’t complete his words, like a wounded and struggling fallen lion, began to doze again. Now we were again silent with the stone-like stillness of that heavy resignation – burning yet freezing – felt only in captive and wretched Muslim lands.
The passenger monsieur was flinging the ashes of his cigar on us, spitting, then shouting at the top of his lungs a French song composed for the Byzantine Emperor and King of Greece Constantine XII.
We were silent… The train was passing through sparse and intermittent groves. And the old yellow-plastered police stations left by the Turks still stood, lined up two or three kilometers apart, like the godless and ruined temples of a heedless nation destroyed while fleeing these roads. We were silent. I think all of us – even the open-minded plump former provincial governor who had lost hope in Islam – all of us were thinking about the guides that the holy book promised to every people, asking ourselves when the Turks’ Mahdi would appear. The passenger monsieur had also begun to shout Greek songs rhymed with unspeakable insults to Turkishness. We were silent. And my eyes kept gazing at that white turban shining like a distant reflection of a white dawn of prosperity and hope, at the old hoca’s large and luminous head swaying with an awake absentmindedness.
¹ From verse 7 of Surah Hud (13/7): “…for every people there is/will be a guide” ² The administrative training institution established in Istanbul in 1858, moved to Ankara in 1935 with the name changed to “School of Political Sciences,” and in 1950 to “Faculty of Political Sciences” ³ False mahdi, mahdi pretender
